A Concise History of the Future

A Concise History of the Future

Long-range precognition, especially when it deals with events of national or international importance- wars, revolutions, natural disasters, epidemics and political upheavals - is notoriously inaccurate. Plainly worded, precisely-dated prophecies have suffered the most, as the passage of time has revealed their falsity. We may instance the prediction of Fra Giorgio Maria da Terni, who prophesied, in 1971, to the consternation of many devout Italians, that between 1973 and 1975 "Naples and a number of other coastal cities will be completely destroyed by tremendous naval bombardments. Beginning with Rome, pillaged and sacked, scourged with pestilence and fire, numberless savage hordes will pour into it one after the other ... thirty million Italians will be massacred and eliminated by appalling atrocities" (Woldben, 1973) [1].

This prophet of doom is excelled by an astrologer, A. Barhault, who in 1956 predicted the outbreak of the Third World War in 1972, followed by a Fourth World War, which "will mainly concern Asia", in 1980, when India and China would be the principal combatants (Barhault, 1956) [2]. Gordon Michael Scallion's precisely dated forecasts of massive earthquakes and other earth changes have also proved erroneous.

Prophecies as precisely dated as these are clearly much more impressive than the more common type of prophecy which couches itself in vague terms and does not specify the date of the impending catastrophe. However, when disproved by the passage of time, these precise forecasts serve only to discredit their authors - for who could take Fra Giorgio and Monsieur Barhault seriously after such a fiasco? - and so are generally avoided. Even Nostradamus generally avoided dating his prophecies exactly, especially when they were likely to occur within his own lifetime.

Such is not the case, however, with the anonymous author of a number of prophecies recorded in a pamphlet published in Leipzig in 1790. The copy I consulted bears a seal indicating that it came into the possession of the Library of the Imperial and Royal Police Office in 1792, presumably for scrutiny as a subversive document, since the author appeared to have had knowledge in advance of the assassination of Gustavus III of Sweden, which occurred in that very year. In 1805 the book was handed over to the Imperial and Royal University of Vienna Library, whose seal it now bears. That indefatigable journalist, Cornelius Tabori, came across it in the University Library in 1936 and noted its prediction of a World War in 1938 (Tabori, 1951) [3].

Alan Vaughan included a rather inaccurate translation of part of its concluding pages in his work on prophecy (Vaughan, 1974) [4]. Apart from these brief references, however, no serious attempt seems to have been made to check the accuracy of these long-range forecasts, covering a span of two hundred and ten years. Actually, as the anonymous author of the pamphlet tells us, the old Polish monk supposed to have made these prophecies had begun them before 1720 [5]. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that this is true. If we could prove that the book had, in fact, been in existence since around 1720 its importance would be greatly enhanced. A precisely detailed account of the outbreak and course of the French Revolution made in the opening years of the eighteenth century would certainly rank as the greatest prophetic feat in recorded history.

The translation from German that follows adheres strictly to the original text, apart from the fact that I have numbered the prophecies and appended a commentary after each of them.

Notes

1. A. Woldben, After Nostradamus, (London, 1974), p. 197.
2. A. Barhault, ("Rumelius"), Ce que sera l'avenir du monde, (Paris, 1956).
3. Cornelius Tabori, My Occult Diary, (London, 1951), pp. 228-131.
4. Alan Vaughan, Patterns of Prophecy, (London, 1974) pp. 204-205. Vaughan appears to have consulted only the 1848 Leipzig edition, which is inferior to the original as a source.
5. The prophecies up to 1790 were not included in the pamphlet, presumably because its readers were interested in the future, not the past.

TRANSLATION:

Highly amazing PROPHECIES of an old monk in Poland from the year 1790 to the end of the world in the year 2000, which have accurately come true to this very day. Found and extracted from an old monastery chronicle by Franz Lima, Leipzig, 1790.

It was during the autumn of 1790 when I commenced my journey from Riga to Salen. Since it was late in the year the roads were in a rather bad condition; and as I had never been to that country it was quite on the cards that I should get lost in a big forest one day. I was alone with my horse when night fell and caught me in the forest. There were neither moon nor stars to point the way and I drifted more and more from the correct path. As I wandered about, I discerned a light in the distance and directed my horse towards it. I came upon a huge building which I took to be a monastery. As I had discovered on several previous journeys, there are gentle and upright people among Catholics and it is therefore unjust if one forms hatred against such people who do not practice religion our way. I therefore knocked at the gate, which was shortly afterwards opened by a monk whose face bore an expression of righteousness and charity. Bidding me a hearty welcome he took a step towards me, saying: "You are a traveller who has lost his way. Come and enjoy the hospitality of our monastery until you feel fit to travel again."

My clerical host served me food and drink and then pointed the way to the bedchamber. I went to sleep and did not waken until the monk summoned me to breakfast. When scrutinising my lodging and the man who had received me so warmly, I realised it was the abbot himself, to whom all the other monks turned with great love and respect.

During breakfast we had the opportunity to get to know each other. The present war with the French, a people who no longer wished to respect all law and God's commandments, was our first topic. During the conversation the Father spoke in such a prophetic manner that he reminded me of the prophets of the Old Testament. I was quite astonished, and on several occasions professed to disagree with him only to be silenced by his forceful and convincing argumentation. He spoke of the future consequences of the French war as if God himself had revealed them to him.

"My gracious friend," I said, "how is it possible that you can speak with such authority on matters to come which are only known to God alone?"

"You are right in some respects," he responded. "However, do we not have the same God whom the prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament had? And should it therefore not be possible for that God to reveal himself as he has done before?"

"No," I retorted. "God does not do such things any more!" "I too thought this way in my younger years," he said, "but sixty years have taught me to think differently. I arrived at this monastery at the age of ten in order to dedicate my life to God. An eighty-year-old monk was abbot then, and whenever I saw him or spoke to him I felt such respect that he too noticed it and came to like me. On his deathbed he handed me a manuscript, which he had drafted for me only. With great surprise, I have since found that since then everything has happened in the year mentioned in the book."

Greatly astonished at this revelation, I begged the monk to allow me to copy it and thus I am able to give a short extract from the book here. The book contains a history of the world from Adam to the year 2000 A.D. As the world since Adam had existed some two thousand years until the time of Moses' Ten Commandments and since a further two thousand years had passed between then and the birth of Jesus Christ, the ninety-year-old Father had come to the conclusion that the world would not exist beyond the year 2000. Everything that had passed in the world prior to the writing of the said book had been recounted, partly from the Bible and partly from history books.

From that time onward, however, the prophecies commenced, prophecies which my host had found to be accurate for the past sixty years. To my great astonishment. I found that the present war with the French had been predicted by the Father long ago. As past events are already known to us I will briefly list only the prophecies which relate to the future.

[I have starred* those prophecies which proved accurate. J.D.F.]

PROPHECY 1:* During the year 1790 and 1791 the French people will continue their revolution and royalty will become but a shadow.

COMMENTARY: True. The French Revolution, which had begun in July 1789, continued its momentum throughout 1790 and 1791. By 1791 Louis XVI was a virtual prisoner and the power of the Jacobins and other extremists was growing steadily.

PROPHECY 2:* The people will elect persons from among their midst whose laws and orders will be followed.

COMMENTARY: True. The Constituent Assembly dissolved itself in September 1791, being replaced by the newly elected Legislative Assembly.

PROPHECY 3: The war between Prussia, Austria, Turkey and Sweden will come to an end when the German head dies.

COMMENTARY: False. Presumably the manuscript had predicted a war between these countries. The statement may be partly true in that Frederick II of Prussia had died in 1786.

PROPHECY 4:* The French King will try to escape but will thus worsen his fate.

COMMENTARY: True. Louis attempted to flee from France in June 1791 but was turned back at Varennes, as prophesied in a famous quatrain of Nostradamus. Since it was learnt that he had meant to re-enter the country with an Austrian army and restore the ancien regime, his attempted escape boded ill for him.

PROPHECY 5:* In the year 1792 one of the kings will be assassinated (the King of Sweden).

COMMENTARY: True. Gustavus III of Sweden was assassinated on 29 March 1792, during a masked ball held in his palace.

PROPHECY 6:* Austria and Prussia will throw their full might against France.

COMMENTARY: True. February 1792 saw the formation of the Austro-Prussian alliance against France.

PROPHECY 7:* However, the French will move into Germany and cause great havoc and devastation.

COMMENTARY: True. In October 1792 the French crossed the Rhine after capturing Mayence. In March 1793 the Rhenish-German National Convention voted for annexation to France.

PROPHECY 8: The residence of a spiritual ruler will suffer most.

COMMENTARY: Unclear.

PROPHECY 9:* 1793. This year will see blemishes that cannot be removed; the King will terminate his life like a common criminal.

COMMENTARY: True. Louis XVI was executed on January 21, 1793.

PROPHECY 10:* Man's ingenuity will invent a device by which both King and Queen and many thousands will lose their lives.

COMMENTARY: True. A reference to the guillotine, invented in 1789. Note that the execution of Marie-Antoinette (October, 1793) is also prophesied.

PROPHECY 11:* Many cities will again be taken from the French, who will cause great devastation to many areas.

COMMENTARY: True. The formation of the First Coalition against France in February 1793, coupled with the declaration of war against France by the Holy Roman Empire in March 1793, led to the loss of considerable French territory, e.g. Corsica and the French settlements in India, as well as the re-capture of the Rhineland and Belgium. There was widespread devastation.

PROPHECY 12:* Prussia and Russia will divide Poland between themselves.

COMMENTARY: True. Russia and Prussia effected the second partition of Poland on January 23, 1793.

PROPHECY 13:* A German trading city will come under the Prussian eagle.

COMMENTARY: True. Danzig, Thorn, Posen, Gresen and Kalisch were taken by Prussia in May 1793. The reference in our text may well be to Danzig, the most prominent of these cities.

PROPHECY 14:* The year 1794 will be most fertile.

COMMENTARY: True.

PROPHECY 15:* The fields will be covered with fruits of all kind, but the war with France will cause great price rises in many regions none the less.

COMMENTARY: True. Inflation was rampant in many parts of Europe in 1794 as a result of the war.

PROPHECY 16: Great battles will ensue and the blood of the slain will flow like water and drench the earth.

COMMENTARY: Partly true. Though there was much fighting in 1794 the great battles came later.

PROPHECY 17:* Despite all this the French will not accept peace or lawful order.

COMMENTARY: True. The French Revolution continued on its course, the Great Terror of June and July 1794 culminating in the execution of Robespierre.

PROPHECY 18: In 1795 all European rulers will unite against this vermin.

COMMENTARY: Partly true. The First Coalition of European rulers had taken place in 1793. The Second Coalition was not formed until 1799.

PROPHECY 19:* The war will take many years and spread over all the earth.

COMMENTARY: True. Europe was not pacified until 1815, by which time all of Europe and many European possessions (e.g. India, Ceylon, West Indies and Cape of Good Hope) had changed hands.

PROPHECY 20: 1796 will see many earth tremors even in regions previously unaffected. These will cause severe devastation in many places

COMMENTARY: Unverified.

PROPHECY 21: - as will be the case in Calabria in 1883.

COMMENTARY: False. The great earthquake in Calabria did not occur until 1908. But our prophet was not too far out.

PROPHECY 22:* In 1797 and 1798 the citizens of free towns will rise against their authorities and the rulers will unite and divide them among themselves.

COMMENTARY: True, though somewhat unclear in expression. This refers both to the overthrow of the Helvetic Confederation (1798) and to the proclamation of the Cisalpine Republic (1797). In each case formerly independent states broke loose from their former rulers only to fall under control of France. A similar fate befell Genoa, which became the Ligurian Republic (1797) and Venice (1797), which was handed over to Austria. In the case of the Cisalpine Republic, risings in Milan, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna and Reggio, which were normally 'free towns' but actually districts loosely attached to the Papal States, led to their incorporation into a new Republic.

PROPHECY 23: There will be a few years peace on Earth.

COMMENTARY: False. The war increased in intensity after 1798 with the formation of the Second Coalition in 1799, the year in which Britain and Austria rejected Napoleon's offer of peace.

PROPHECY 24: The year 1800 will see terrible floods, particularly in Holland.

COMMENTARY: Unverified.

PROPHECY 25: East Friesland too will suffer, but will benefit by a rich crop in the following year.

COMMENTARY: Unverified.

PROPHECY 26: Whilst Holland will have to import its grain at great expense from neighbouring countries.

COMMENTARY: Unverified.

PROPHECY 27: In 1804 new upheavals will occur in Poland.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 28: The richest landlords and citizens will look for peace and security under Prussia and settle in Lithuania.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 29:* The year 1805 will see a war between France and Austria and if the latter does not sue for peace it will lose all.

COMMENTARY: True. Napoleon defeated the Russo-Austrian forces at Austerlitz.

PROPHECY 30:* 1806 will bring war between Prussia and France.

COMMENTARY: True. Prussia declared war on France in October 1806.

PROPHECY 31:* In 1807 the same war will spread across the whole of Prussia.

COMMENTARY: True, in that the Treaty of Tilsit (July, 1807) cost Prussia all Polish Territories and all territories west of the Elbe.

PROPHECY 32: 1814 and 1815 will see two great battles, the second one between Alsace and Lorraine.

COMMENTARY: Partly true. October 1813 witnessed Napoleon's defeat in the battle of Leipzig in which the French alone lost 50,000 men. 1815, of course, was the year of Waterloo. Alsace and Lorraine were not involved in any battles.

PROPHECY 33: Should peace come about however, then a new war will break out.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 34: A battle will ensue and France will be partitioned in four.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 35: From 1815 the teachings of Christianity will decline.

COMMENTARY: False. 1815 marked the beginning of a broad revival of religious faith throughout Europe.

PROPHECY 36: Prussia will use its power to enforce the true religion of the reformation.

COMMENTARY: False. After 1815 even Prussia was prepared to support the revival of papal power in Europe.

PROPHECY 37: In 1824 the Turkish Grand Vizier will start a war against the Emperors of Austria and Russia and threaten the whole of Europe until Prussia, Sweden and England join in and bring this war to an end in 1835.

COMMENTARY: False

PROPHECY 38:* In 1830 another revolution will sweep France. COMMENTARY: True, the revolution of July 1830 installed Louis Phillippe on the throne of France as a constitutional monarch.

PROPHECY 39: - which will see a new government of short duration.

COMMENTARY: False, the government was stable until 1848.

PROPHECY 40: The Turks and Persians will be subdued.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 41: Constantinople will become the residence of the Roman Emperor.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 42: Persia however will be seized by Russia for all time.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 43: In 1840 the House of Orange will die out and Holland will be ceded to Prussia.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 44: The years 1846, 1847 and 1848 will be blessed with rich harvests.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 45:* In 1848 a terrible revolution will spread across Europe and topple kings and emperors.

COMMENTARY: True. A brilliantly accurate prediction! 1848 was the Year of Revolutions. Two Emperors (France and Austria) were forced to abdicate.

PROPHECY 46:* This Revolution will culminate in France.

COMMENTARY: True. Louis Phillippe abdicated and France was the only country whose governmental structure underwent marked change as a result of the revolution.

PROPHECY 47: The French Emperor will endure the same fate as in 1793.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 48:* A better time will come for France.

COMMENTARY: True, if this refers to the Second Empire.

PROPHECY 49:* France will not be able to treasure its freedom, will abuse it, fall apart and destroy itself.

COMMENTARY: True, if this refers to the events of 1870-71.

PROPHECY 50:* In 1849 even divided Germany will see better times.

COMMENTARY: True, if this refers to the convocation of the National Parliament (May-December, 1848) and its subsequent Declaration of the Fundamental Rights of the German People.

PROPHECY 51: The people, armed with good spirits and sound minds, will demand their rights and obtain their freedom by force if need be.

COMMENTARY: False. The National Parliament failed and the democratic risings were suppressed.

PROPHECY 52: As for Germany and neighbouring countries, 1849, 1850 will also be blessed years for England and Ireland.

COMMENTARY: False. Ireland was still suffering from the terrible famine and depopulation caused by the second failure of the potato crop in 1846. And although England, as Macaulay put it, had "order in the midst of anarchy", 1849 and 1850 were years of economic instability and high unemployment.

PROPHECY 53: In religion brother will feud with brother, professing to have the right belief.

COMMENTARY: Unclear.

PROPHECY 54: A split commencing in 1850 will climax in 1858 with the complete expulsion of the Jesuits.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 55: In 1854 Venice will perish in one night and none will escape death for all will drown.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 56: 1860-65 will see major earthquakes in Italy and ports will sink into the Mediterranean.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 57: 1866 will see a revolution in England.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 58:* 1870 will see a new discord between the Pope and the House of Austria.

COMMENTARY: True. In July, Austria revoked the concordat with the Papacy after the decree of Papal Infallibility.

PROPHECY 59: The Pope will be subdued after bloody battles and become a paid priest of the Emperor.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 60: In 1870 the whole of Italy will be subject to the Emperor.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 61: In 1882 Poland will ask the German King to take over the country so that Germany's protection and laws may be enjoyed.

COMMENTARY: False

PROPHECY 62:* A big fleet will be constructed enabling Germany to fight on sea as well as on land.

COMMENTARY: True, though the expansion of German naval power did not begin until later in the century.

PROPHECY 63:* In 1889 a pestilence will sweep across Europe claiming some 100,000 lives.

COMMENTARY: True. A major epidemic of influenza decimated Europe in 1889, claiming thousands of lives. This appears to have been the first outbreak of this new viral strain.

PROPHECY 64: People will flee all over the world and Europe will become depopulated.

COMMENTARY: False, in this context, though emigration from Europe reached new heights in the 80's.

PROPHECY 65: New countries will rise in South America which will surpass Europe in law, religion and everything else.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 66: In the year 1890 an earthquake will destroy many German cities as well.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 67:* So strange as many a century has been, the twentieth century will be the one where all the most terrible things will befall mankind.

COMMENTARY: True, at least in this commentator's estimation.

PROPHECY 68:* 1900. At the beginning of the century many princes will turn on their fathers, citizens against their governments, children against their parents and nations against nations.

COMMENTARY: True.

PROPHECY 69:* This will go on until 1938, when a general world war will threaten the whole of creation.

COMMENTARY: True, though World War II did not actually begin until 1939. An astonishing hit!

PROPHECY 70:* Whole countries will be destroyed by the ravages of war and many of the big cities will be destroyed and emptied of their population.

COMMENTARY: True. And equally astonishing in its accuracy!

PROPHECY 71: Only the year 1986 will finally see peace.

COMMENTARY: False, unfortunately.

PROPHECY 72:* Only a few years later many will carry on religion in a different way. There will only be a few who will remain true to the Bible and the true teachings of Jesus.

COMMENTARY: True, as far as much of Europe is concerned.

PROPHECY 73: In the year 1987 a great darkness will spread across the earth, but it will last only a few days.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 74: In 1988 a sizeable comet will appear in the heavens which will assert such gravitational pull that the oceans will overflow and drown whole countries.

COMMENTARY: False.

PROPHECY 75: In 1996 an earthquake will shake the whole world and devour Italy, Naples, Sicily, Portugal and Spain.

COMMENTARY: False as of November 1996.

PROPHECY 76: 2000. Finally the Day of the Lord will come when He judges the living and the dead. Stars and comets will fall from the heavens and set fire to the earth and thus this earth, which has existed for six thousand years since its creation, will perish. The judgement will commence, a joy to the righteous and a terror to the sinner. Judge of the world have mercy on all!

COMMENTARY: Apocalyptic milleniarism.

This is what I wanted to report of the strange book which is now over seventy years old and which has seen many a prophecy come true, so one may gather that the other prophecies too will come true.

When you read the foregoing, be thankful to the Lord that he did not let you be born at a time when you would have to see and feel all these horrors.

Treasure God's word at all times, love your neighbours and you will not need to cry out; "Oh you mountains, fall upon us, you hills cover us?", but rather; "Praise, honour and glory be to God, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

(Seal of the Imperial and Royal University Library, Vienna, 1805).

 

CONCLUSIONS:

There is an obvious correlation in this work between the number of successful predictions and the contiguity of the event to the prophet's own time. In general, the accuracy of the prophecies decreases as they advance into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries [1]. The most dramatic achievement is undoubtedly the forecasting of developments in the French Revolution and the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Equally impressive is the prediction of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, both of which are assigned to their precise year. The long-range forecasting of World War II, accurate to within a year, is nothing short of astonishing. One can only hope that the other prophecies of destruction for the closing years of the twentieth century stem from traditional theology rather than clairvoyant vision.

The distortions and omissions, however, are almost as noteworthy as the successes. Our clairvoyant. failed to see the ascent to power of Napoleon and the subsequent protracted war that culminated in Waterloo (1815). He also overlooked the rise of Germany and the United States and completely missed World War I. Nor did he forecast the October Revolution, the emergence of Bolshevism and the spread of Communism across half the globe. Above all, there is no mention of the development of modern technology, though one could have thought that the very ubiquitousness of the motor-car would have forced itself on the prophet's attention, to say nothing of atomic fission and fusion, the Damocles' sword of our age. In compensation, he lists many disasters - earthquakes, wars and other catastrophes - which mercifully never occurred, among them the destruction of Venice in a single night in 1854, with all its inhabitants. One is almost tempted to adopt the hypothesis of an alternative future, developing along another world-line in a parallel universe, in which history unfolded itself as our prophet had predicted.

This disturbing work convincingly disproves the contention, advanced by some parapsychologists, that precognition involves perception, not of some future event, but rather of some future individual experience on the part of the percipient or of some other person. It also completely disproves the so-called "active hypothesis", first put forward by Angelos Tanagras and later amplified and reformulated by Jules Eisenbud, which asserts that the clairvoyant is himself the cause of the event precognised [2]. We are therefore thrown back on physical theories such as those which attempt to link precognition with quantum mechanics and probability functions [3].

All in all, in spite of its divagations from actuality, this is a startling and depressing document. Startling, because of its large number of successful, precisely dated predictions. Depressing, because it shows how little of the future is actually revealed to even the most psychically gifted. Truly, we see "through a glass darkly". The document also raises the old question of freedom of will. If Louis XVI had read this pamphlet would he have been forewarned and thus escaped his fate? If World War II was destined to begin place around 1938-39 then of what avail were all the forces that tried to avert war during the twenties and thirties? In the light of these considerations we should rejoice that our prophet was so often wrong. For surely all of us would prefer an open universe based on freedom to a closed, determinist universe in which we were moved like programmed robots towards our inevitable ends [4]

NOTES

1. This effect has also been noticed with the prophecies of Nostradamus. See J.E. Orme, "A Note on the Nostradamus Prophecies," JSPR, Vol. 55, No. 781, September 1979, and Liberte le Vert, The Prophecies and Enigmas of Nostradamus (New Jersey, 1980). Le Vert asserts that Nostradamus "was nearly always wrong" when trying to prophesy the distant future.

2. See A. Tanagras, Psychological Elements in Parapsychological Tradition (N.Y. 1967) and J. Eisenbud, Paranormal Foreknowledge (N.Y. 1982).

3. Benjamin Fal-Or has argued that time is not necessarily irreversible. D.F. Louden has postulated that there are two types of time, namely physical and psychical.

4. A useful discussion of the complex philosophical and scientific issues involved in precognition may be found in Danah Zohar, Through the Time Barrier (London, 1982), pp. 115-164. Zohar observes (p.161) that "the only future to which a faculty such as precognition could possibly have access is an indeterminate probabilistic future consisting of all the 'might-be's' packed into the Schrodinger wave-equations. Thus the inaccuracy noted in reported cases of precognition would simply be mirroring the fact that in reality itself there is ample scope for any number of alternatives in the direction future events might take." If so then we would appear to have some minimal degree of freedom to alter our future, though some events would come very close to being inevitable. We can only hope that the numerous forecasts of planet-wide destruction during the early years of the twenty-first century will prove erroneous. In particular, let us hope that Psi-Tech's forecasts of mass epidemics and destructive hurricanes, achieved through Technical Remote Viewing which claims one hundred per cent accuracy, turn out to be false alarms.

[Published in Journal of Alternative Realities, Vol 3, Nov 1996]

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM

The Child That Never Was?

Deconstructing an Apparition

 

Some years ago I received a call from a Miss Fotheringham (pseudonym) who told me that a neighbour of hers was having her house exorcised that morning because it was haunted.  The next day I contacted the neighbour, Mrs Rossmoyne (pseudonym), of Subiaco and found her to be an intelligent, rational and helpful informant.

Mrs Rossmoyne told me that the previous August a friend had given her an old photograph album, bound in leather with a brass catch, which had been identified as being an Australian album of an unusual design, probably dating from about 1880.  Her friend had purchased this from a second-hand shop.  It was a family album containing approximately twenty photographs, among them one of a grave-stone marking a grave in which were buried George Whitehead, a child aged one year and four months who had died in 1856, and his elder brother, also named George, who had died at the age of twenty-four in a railway accident.  It was impossible to ascertain the location of the grave, but the inscription on the gravestone would seem to indicate that it might be found in or around Darlington.  This could refer either to Darlington, New South Wales, or Darlington, Western Australia, though the latter would appear to be the more likely site.  So far, I have not succeeded in finding the gravestone.

After Mrs Rossmoyne had owned the album for a couple of weeks, she was sitting in front of the fire with her husband, glancing through the photographs, when she suddenly decided that she did not wish to keep the picture of the grave because it was "morbid".  She thereupon took it out of the album and threw it into the fire.  Her husband, who was able to corroborate that she had remarked that she did not like the picture in question, did not actually see her do this.  Mrs Rossmoyne however, is quite positive that she pulled it out of the slots in which it was set and burnt it.

About three weeks later, while showing the album to her younger brother, she noticed to her amazement that the photograph was back in its original place in the album.  She was certain that there could not have originally been two photographs of the gravestone as she had gone carefully through the album on a number of occasions.  She immediately rang a friend of hers who acts as a medium to a Roman Catholic group, and asked her advice as to whether she should burn the picture again.  The medium advised her not to do so.  On 27th December, Mrs Rossmoyne noticed that a photograph of her father, taken when he was approximately two years old, had disappeared from the shelf on which it stood.  A thorough search of the room revealed nothing.  At the end of January, however, when Mrs Rossmoyne and her husband returned from an overseas holiday, the photograph had reappeared, not in its original position but on the shelf beneath, standing up as though it had been put there deliberately.  Mrs Rossmoyne had previously checked this shelf thoroughly.  Since the house had been locked up during their absence it was clearly impossible for the photograph to have reappeared through normal means.

Just before she went on holiday, Mrs Rossmoyne had woken up in the middle of the night feeling thirsty and on walking down the long hall to the kitchen to get herself a drink, had encountered the apparition of a child, who appeared to be about the size of a two-year-old.  Since she is used to baby-sitting toddlers, her immediate reaction was to step back and apologise as though she was dealing with a real child that she had almost bumped into.  When she switched on the light however, she suddenly realised that she had seen a ghost, since there was no child in the house at all at that time.  She described the apparition as looking like a little girl, even though she could not see its clothing or its face, for it seemed like a dark shape.  Nevertheless, though she distinctly had the impression that it was wearing a dress and had long hair, she believed that it may have been the ghost of young George Whitehead, for she was well aware that Victorian boys wore dresses until they were around four years old.

On the morning of 26th February Mrs Rossmoyne was looking after a friend's child, Kay (pseudonym), aged two years and eleven months.  Kay, who Mrs Rossmoyne describes as a precociously intelligent child, complained to her that unseen children were "laughing noisily" and annoying her.  Mrs Rossmoyne was surprised at this as there were no other children in the house and all was quiet.  When she asked if Kay had seen children around the house, Kay replied that on previous occasions, she had seen "a little pink person" (Kay's habitual term for a white-skinned child), smaller than herself, both in the house and in the back garden.  This child was a stranger to Kay and not one of the four children whom Mrs Rossmoyne normally baby-sits.  Kay said she had seen the child, a girl, in the sitting-room on one occasion playing with the photographs on the shelf.  On another occasion, when Kay had been by herself in the toddlers' pool in the garden, the little girl had come up to her and "thrown things", then had told her that she should "put a scarf around her hat".  Kay must have found this odd, as she wasn't wearing a hat.  According to Kay, the little girl had come in through the locked back gate, which is about five feet in height and impregnable to small children, and had walked away in the same way, disappearing through the locked gate.  She had not given Kay her name.

That evening Mrs Rossmoyne's husband was standing in the kitchen when a glass cheese-dome some twenty centimetres tall, flew out of the deep crystal bowl in which it is normally kept, and crashed down onto the seagrass matting in the kitchen with force enough to shatter it to pieces.  Her husband was standing near the sink at least two metres away from the bowl, which was on a top shelf.  Mr Rossmoyne, a librarian by profession, who was described by his wife as being open-minded yet fundamentally rationalist in outlook, was quite certain that the dome could not have fallen naturally from the bowl in which it was kept.

Mrs Rossmoyne at this time was suffering from insomnia, though she is normally a sound sleeper.  Her insomnia had lasted for some three months and had become so severe that she was getting only two to three hours' sleep a night.  Even though she was exhausted, she would wake up shortly after falling asleep and would find it almost impossible to fall asleep again.  She had tried taking Mogadon, a hypnotic, but found it had little or no effect.  From 18th February onwards what sleep she did obtain was troubled by nightmares.  On 27th February, after a day disturbed by events described above, she had to wake her husband to keep her company during the small hours.  Her sleeplessness appears to have been connected with what she described as the oppressive atmosphere of her old house, an increasing sense of tension and depression which finally began to have its effect on her domestic harmony, forcing her to think seriously that she and her husband might have to move in with friends.

At last, on 3rd March – curiously enough, the very day on which I first contacted her – she called in an Anglican Bishop who duly exorcised the house after commenting on the atmosphere of evil that he encountered there [1].  Mrs Rossmoyne was adamant that, though she and her husband had been living in the house for three years, its psychic atmosphere had been wholesome until she burnt the photograph of the gravestone.  She was equally certain that the exorcism had "cleared the air", a statement with which her husband agreed.

At this stage let us take stock of the paranormal features of this case, which may be listed as follows:
1. The reappearance in the album of the burnt photograph.
2. The disappearance of the father's photograph.
3. The apparition of the child.
4. The children's laughter heard by Kay.
5. The child seen in the back garden by Kay.
6. The paranormal breaking of the glass cheese-dome.
7. The growing sense of tension and oppression in the house.

Let me now comment on the above items:

1.   This is clearly the most unusual feature in this case.  I cannot recall another instance in psychical literature involving the reconstitution of an object destroyed by fire.  It could well be, of course, that Mrs Rossmoyne was mistaken and that she did not throw the photograph into the fire though she was strongly tempted to do so.  Since there were no witnesses to her act, we cannot definitely say that it occurred.

2.   The disappearance of the father's photograph is especially interesting, since it depicted him at the age of two years, that is, at about the same age as the younger George Whitehead.  Both Mrs Rossmoyne and her husband were quite certain that the photograph disappeared in December and was replaced at the end of January.  It seems impossible that this could have been done through normal means.

3.   Mrs Rossmoyne's encounter with the apparition was again not witnessed.  We should note that it was seen in the dimness of a shadowed hall and disappeared when the light was put on.  Could it conceivably have been a hallucination?  Yet Mrs Rossmoyne was quite positive that she had seen the figure of a child, even though it only appeared to her as a dark shape.  Certainly her action in stepping back and apologising would indicate that whatever she saw was very real to her.

4 & 5.   Kay's evidence deserves to be taken seriously in spite of her age.  She was described to me as a highly intelligent and sensible only child, who had never before given the slightest that she was in any way psychically sensitive.  Her reaction to the laughter was one of annoyance, verging on anger, and not of fear.  She was quite precise about the "little pink person" she had seen in the house and the garden, and would not budge from her story.  At no time did she give the impression that she was indulging in fantasy.  When Kay said she had seen the child playing with the photographs, she was not aware that one of the photographs had disappeared.  Similarly, when she said that the child had been throwing things she was not aware of the breaking of the cheese-dome, all these phenomena having been kept from her for fear of alarming her.  Her remark that the child had urged her "to put a scarf around her hat" is interesting since, in the Victorian period, no lady in Australia would venture out under our ferocious sun without a large hat, often tied on with a scarf which came around the face and fastened under the chin.  This is just the sort of remark that a Victorian child might well make on seeing a little girl out in the sun without a hat.  Kay's identification of the child as a little "girl" need not be taken literally, as it could well mean no more than that the child had long hair.  A talking apparition is rare but not unknown, as both Myers (1906) and Tyrrell (1963) can testify [2].  In any case this apparition seems to have been a laconic one, for Kay reported no further conversations. I should stress that Kay's remarks were largely spontaneous and that the minimum of questioning was used and then only to clarify details.  As Professor Stevenson has shown, in his studies of cases of the reincarnation type, quite young children can make remarkably accurate witnesses provided the utmost caution is exercised when seeking to elicit information from them.

6.   The paranormal flight of the cheese-dome would clearly indicate some type of poltergeist activity and may be compared with the previous disappearance and replacement of the father's picture.  Both Mr Rossmoyne, who witnessed the event, and his wife who heard it, were quite positive that there was no way in which the glass cheese-dome could have emerged from the crystal bowl under normal circumstances.  Mrs Rossmoyne was surprised that the dome had broken, since the matting on which it fell was so soft that she had many times dropped delicate glasses onto it without even cracking them.  It appears to have been hurled out of the bowl with considerable force.

7.   The growing sense of oppression and tension in the house from September to March was commented on not just by the Rossmoynes but by their friends, as well as by the Bishop who carried out the exorcism.  It seems to have been directly responsible for Mrs Rossmoyne's insomnia and nightmares.  I should add that during the course of the interview I mentioned to Mrs Rossmoyne that since I began working on the case I had myself been suffering from greatly disturbed sleep, awakening on several consecutive mornings at precisely 2.13 am.  She was astonished, pointing out that she also had been waking up at precisely that time for some weeks.  Clearly some form of telepathy was at work here, with rather unpleasant consequences for the investigator.

To sum up:

I think we may say that although no single feature of this case carries complete conviction, all of them taken together are impressive and certainly exhibit an inner logic which I personally find convincing.  I should also say that I was most favourably impressed by the principal informant, who emerges as a sensitive yet rational witness of considerable commonsense and courage.  I might add that she has resolutely refused to give up either the album or the offending photograph, both of which are still in her possession.
There are certain unusual features about this haunting which should be carefully analysed.  Let us begin by assuming for argument's sake, that we are actually dealing with the manifestation of the ghost of a very young child.  Certain difficulties immediately present themselves if we adopt this hypothesis.  Firstly, the photograph in question was that of a grave in which two members of a family were buried.  Yet, in Mrs Rossmoyne's account, only one of them appears in response to the burning of the photograph, and that one not the elder boy who died violently in a railway accident at a comparatively mature age, but the younger one, no more than a baby, who died when just over a year old.  This is startling, because there is no mention of the ghosts of babies – and seldom of young children in the literature of psychical research.  Traditionally, it is held that such spirits cannot become 'earth-bound' and give rise to hauntings simply because they have not yet had time to form attachments to persons, places or things.  Yet in this case the little ghost seems to have been evoked by a photograph of its grave taken some thirty years after its death.  All in all, this seems so unlikely that we are perforce driven to look for other more plausible explanations of what was actually happening.

We may begin with what I believe is the most important aspect of this case, namely, the growing air of tension and oppression in the atmosphere of the house between the acquisition of the album in August and the successful exorcism in March [3].  Mrs Rossmoyne and her husband both commented on the remarkable change for the better in the psychic atmosphere of their home after the exorcism, commenting that it was as though "a black cloud had been lifted from the house" and "oxygen pumped into the air".  Furthermore, Mrs Rossmoyne's serious insomnia, which had begun with the burning of the photograph, disappeared immediately after the purgative ceremony and so far has not returned.

Here again, we have departed from the pattern of the usual haunting, which is seldom accompanied by such symptoms.  Are we not, in fact, in the realms of the poltergeist here, where tension and depression are only too common?  Apparitions are often connected with poltergeist cases, so much so that William G. Roll includes a section on 'non-physical phenomena', including ghosts, in his useful Questionnaire appended to his book, Poltergeist [4].  In the present case, we have only one classic poltergeist manifestation – the shattering of the cheese-dome – but it seems likely, in view of the increasing tension in the house, that such disturbances would have increased had the exorcist not been called in promptly.  In any case, the disappearance and replacement of the father's picture is a typical poltergeist trick and not one normally connected with apparitions.  I believe that we may therefore be dealing here not just with an apparition but with a rather unusual poltergeist situation, which was scotched before it had a chance to develop fully.

George Zorab (1980, p.290) has well remarked that "in haunting cases as well as in poltergeist cases there is a certain living person who should be regarded as the 'energy centre' producing the phenomena observed and the same paranormal faculties are involved in both types of spontaneous case."  In this instance the focus of the haunting was clearly Mrs Rossmoyne.  It was she who burnt the photograph and witnessed its reappearance.  It was she who saw the apparition; who suffered from insomnia and was in charge of Kay.  It was also her own father's photograph, taken, significantly enough, when he was a child of two, which vanished from the shelf.

Why did Mrs Rossmoyne wish to burn the photograph of the gravestone?  Her explanation that it was "morbid" does not, I feel, fully account for her action.  Could it be that she felt subconsciously anxious at the sight of a child's grave and was therefore impelled to destroy the disturbing picture?  Mrs Rossmoyne has no children of her own and has never lost a child, therefore the picture could not have evoked unpleasant memories for her, unless it subconsciously evoked recollections of an abortion or a miscarriage, though I felt this was too delicate a question to put to her and therefore refrained from asking it, especially as I should also have had to ask whether, in the case of an abortion, her husband had also been in favour of it.  Certainly, her impulsive destruction of the picture is hard to explain, unless one postulates that it disturbed her subconsciously to such an extent that she felt compelled to get rid of it.  This postulated conflict would also help to explain the return of the picture.  I am convinced that Mrs Rossmoyne was certain she destroyed the picture and equally convinced that she did not do so.  But her shock on seeing the picture intact in the album, after she thought she had destroyed it, like the ghost of a child that never was returning to haunt her, was sufficient to spark off the manifestations that followed.  The first of these was the onset of her insomnia, characterised by that early-morning waking typical of intense anxiety and depression.  The second was the disappearance of her father's photograph, a highly significant occurrence, not only because it was her father's picture that vanished but because it depicted him at the age of two, suggesting that a subconscious equation was being made between the father, who may here have symbolised Mrs Rossmoyne's husband, and the dead child of the "burnt" photograph.

The appearance of her father's photograph after a tension-dissolving holiday away from the house was almost immediately followed by her seeing the apparition of a child to whom she apologised.  This detail is again highly significant, since it clearly indicates a subconscious feeling of guilt that had centred around the child and/or father/husband.  It was about this time that Kay, who was not Mrs Rossmoyne's own child but a neighbour's, began seeing "a little pink person" playing with the photographs on the shelf from which the picture vanished.  In the article mentioned above, Zorab states that "the phenomena in haunting need not be of a purely subjective, hallucinatory nature", a point made also by Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell (1979, pp.179; 250-251) as well as by Andrew MacKenzie (Zorab & MacKenzie, 1980, pp.292-293).

It seems highly likely then that Kay really did see a phantom that not only removed and replaced the photograph of the father but also appeared in the garden, "threw things" and spoke to her before disappearing through a locked gate.  Such an apparition might well have been a thought-form created by Mrs Rossmoyne in much the same way as Madame Alexandra David-Neel (1958) created her celebrated tulpa of a monk.  Against this, however, we might contend that the child's laughter, its advice to Kay about putting a scarf around her hat and the very fact that it spoke (unlike a tulpa), would argue for its existence as an independently existing entity, whether connected with the long-dead George Whitehead or not.

The climax of the haunting came with the hurling of the cheese-dome, which narrowly missed Mrs Rossmoyne's husband, who until then had remained on the periphery of the events.  We should note here that since this act of aggression was directed against her husband, there are traces once again of an unresolved conflict here.  It was, furthermore, this incident that led to his agreeing to let Mrs Rossmoyne call in an exorcist and put an end to a situation which could well have degenerated into a full-blown poltergeist disturbance, which may well have led to actual injury being inflicted on the husband, but never, if my conjectures about the origin of the disturbance are correct, upon anyone else.

It is certain that Mrs Rossmoyne is psychically gifted.  Indeed, at the beginning of our interviews she indicated as much, telling me, among other things, that at the age of sixteen she had seen an apparition in the garden of three people dressed in old-fashioned clothes, which had lasted for a full fifteen minutes!  She also added that her mother possessed the same talents and, like herself, was afraid to develop or even use them.  In this case, I believe, Mrs Rossmoyne used her considerable psychic powers to initiate a haunting of a highly unusual type, which helped to resolve a deep inner conflict brought to the surface by the sight of the photograph.  Precisely what this conflict is, I cannot say, nor is it the task of the psychical researcher who is not an analyst to delve into such matters.  But noting that D. Scott Rogo (1979, pp.236-237) asserts that "unmanageable guilt" is at the root of most poltergeist activity, we may well be inclined to suspect its presence in this case [5].  So powerful, indeed, were Mrs Rossmoyne's psychic talents that she was able not only to initiate the haunting but even to transmit her insomnia to me when I began to work on the case, even to the extent of waking me up at precisely the same time every morning at which she had been accustomed to wake, namely 2.13 am [6].  The time  itself is highly significant, for symbolically I believe it may stand for 'doubly unlucky', ('twice thirteen') which is certainly a reference to the Whitehead family, who were doubly unlucky to lose two of their sons, and perhaps a reference to other circumstances in Mrs Rossmoyne's life (a second miscarriage or abortion perhaps?) which only she could explain.

Professor Ian Stevenson (1972) has argued that not all poltergeist cases can be explained psychologically in terms of the projection of repressed feelings by the subconscious or unconscious mind.  While agreeing wholeheartedly with Professor Stevenson that this is so, I was nevertheless driven to the conclusion that in this instance we cannot conclusively ascribe the events witnessed to a discarnate entity, though certain aspects of the case argue in favour of this hypothesis.  Beside those aspects mentioned above, the only other indication in favour of such a thesis is the fact that the haunting ceased after the exorcism.  But here again it could be argued that this was due to the calming effect this impressive ceremony had on Mrs Rossmoyne rather than that the ceremony was instrumental in banishing a child's unhappy ghost.

D. Scott Rogo (1982, p.236) has rightly pointed out that poltergeists are sometimes "reactions to a total family situation" and not necessarily "a psychic eruption revolving around a central agent".  In this case, however, I would argue that it seems probable that we are dealing not with a situation generated by a family disturbance, for the household in question is a harmonious one, but with an outbreak centering around a single person, who undoubtedly suffered a great deal from the haunting, regardless of whether it was self-generated or not, and was deeply relieved when it was terminated by a traditional exorcism.

Notes
1.   The bishop, an experienced exorcist, was insistent that the focus of the evil he sensed in the house lay in the kitchen, scene of the poltergeist activity.
2.   See Forman, 1978, for a description of a group encounter with a loquaciously shrewish apparition of an old lady.
3.   Such an atmosphere of depression and tension is frequently associated with both hauntings and poltergeists.
4.   Roll, 1976, p.190; Rogo, 1979, passim.  Rogo, 1982, 237, observes rightly that "it may be very difficult to clearly differentiate between hauntings and poltergeists and...some cases which we classify as hauntings may be hidden poltergeist cases."
5.   Rogo, 1982, p.252, states that, "Each poltergeist agent is imbued with the ability to create a PK-being from his inner guilt, hate and repression, knowing only that it exists to cause destruction."  In the case under review there was no destruction beyond the breaking of the cheese-dome, though little Kay stated that the apparition "threw things".
6.   A careful search of my case-notes has made it certain that Mrs Rossmoyne did not inform me of the time of her early morning waking until after I had mentioned mine to her, so I was not consciously influenced by her experience.

Bibliography:

David-Neel, Alexandra, 1958,  Magic and Mystery in Tibet, New Hyde Park.
Forman, J., 1978,  The Mask of Time, London.
Gauld, A. & A.D. Cornell, 1979,  Poltergeists, London.
Haining, Peter, 1988,  Poltergeist: Tales of Deadly Ghosts, London.
Kettlekamp, Larry, 1980,  Mischievous Ghosts: The Poltergeist and PK, New York.
Myers, F.W.H., 1906, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, London.
Playfair, Guy Lyon, 1982,  This House is Haunted: An Investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist, London.
Rogo. D. Scott, 1979,  The Poltergeist Experience, London.
Rogo. D. Scott, 1986,  On the Track of the Poltergeist, London.
Rogo. D. Scott, 1982, 'The Poltergeist and Family Dynamics', Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 51, No.790, 233-237.
Roop, Peter, 1982,  Poltergeists: Opposing Viewpoints, London.
Spencer, John & Anne, 1997, The Poltergeist Phenomenon: An Enquiry into Psychic Experience, London.
Stander, Philip & Paul Schmolling, 1996,  Poltergeists and the Paranormal. Fact Beyond Fiction, New York.
Stevenson, Ian, 1972,  'Are Poltergeists Living or are they Dead?', Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 66, 235-252.
Thurston, Herbert & J.H. Crehan,  Ghosts and Poltergeists, London.
Tyrrell, G.N.M., 1963,  Apparitions, New York.
Williams, Gurney, 1979,  Ghosts and Poltergeists, New York.
Williams, Jobeth, 1997,  Poltergeist, VHS Tape, New York.
Wilson, Colin, 1993,  Poltergeist: A Study in Destructive Haunting, London.
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Any reader who may have come across this gravestone, or knows where it might be found, is asked to contact me.  JDF

 

[Journal of Alternative Realities, Vol 6, Issue 1, 1998]

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM